PayPal McAffee Payment Phishing Email with no subject

For the record, this is a PayPal McAffee Payment phishing email attempt that is recently going around, with no subject. Opening the attachment Book4.xlxs spreadsheet reveals an image with no link, just a phone number.

What to do?  Report them, goto bottom of page. 

From: Prity Dhara <prity577dhara790@gmail.com> Subject:  PayPal INVOICE NO: TOLL-FREE: +1 (803) 339-3084 FEBRUARY 24, 2026 The payment was successfully completed, and the amount has been automatically withdrawn from your account. Refund Help Line: +1 (803) 339-3084 Item McAfee PC Security (1 Year Subscription) Price $539.42 Total: $539.42 A payment of USD 539.42 has been initiated and will be charged to your account within 24 hours. If you did not authorize this charge, please contact our support team right away for assistance. Contact Support: +1 (803) 339-3084

PHISHING LINKs;

1. Phone number

How to tell this is a Phishing email?

1. Check email address in full, if it's not from originating company then it's phishing.
2. Hover over all links in email, if it's not from the company's website then forget it.
3. The best way is to 

How to examine Email Message Source?

Now let's look at message source

1. Outlook.com->Actions->View Message Source. 
2. Gmail.com->More (down arrow to top right)->Show original.

Check for suspicious links, anything that does not originate from source domain, like apple.com.

Report Phishing Email (not as Spam)

1. Outlook.com->Junk (at Top)->Phishing Scam
2. Gmail.com->More (down-arrow to top right)->Report Phishing 

Report Phishing to Google

If you have received this email, take further action by

1. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/

Report phishing at Microsoft and government agencies

1. http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/phishing-faq.aspx

Bitwarden, Lastpass, and Dashlane not so secure after all, each had vulnerabilities

The team at Applied Cryptography Group at ETH Zurich conducted a study to scrutinize the security architecture of three popular password manager providers: Bitwarden, Lastpass, and Dashlane. Between them, they serve around 60 million users and have a 23% market share. The researchers demonstrated 12 attacks on Bitwarden, 7 on LastPass, and 6 on Dashlane.

Source:  3 popular password managers are less secure than promised - Futurity

Create a password that avoids repeated characters, excludes sequential patterns, and uses common symbols permitted by online‑banking security rules

Last working version of Adobe Acrobat Reader for Windows 7

Last working version of Adobe Acrobat for Windows 7 was last year's release in 2025 which was 25.001.20997. 

Ensure automatic updates are turned off for Acrobat Reader.

👉 Download Autoruns - Microsoft Sysinternals and turn off in services and scheduled tasks. 

Remember to Harden Adobe Acrobat Reader from malware.


Safer and faster open-source alternative: 
Get XpdfReader PDF software

Download Links for Adobe Acrobat Reader v 25.001.20997

x86 - working

https://ardownload3.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/win/AcrobatDC/2500120997/AcroRdrDC2500120997_MUI.exe


Note: Adobe Acrobat Reader DC MUI stands for Multilingual User Interface. It is a special distribution of Adobe Acrobat Reader designed so that one installer contains all supported languages, and the application can switch languages dynamically based on system settings or enterprise configuration. 

x64 

https://ardownload3.adobe.com/pub/adobe/acrobat/win/AcrobatDC/2500120997/AcroRdrDCx642500120997_en_US.exe

Note: Did not work on my system as it did not meet requirements? Here for completeness.